Guardian Nurse Read Free Page B

broken.
    ‘France is a silly name for a girl,’ he said.
    ‘It’s Frances really. Remember? But how do you know about France?’ She recalled Mr. West saying that the child had not been to school.
    ‘I lived there,’ he said.
    She concealed a delighted smile; she loved an extravagant imagination, never did she consider it or call it a fabrication. She did not mind, she thought, if the going was hard, and it looked like being hard, if the reward was to be a child with dreams in him before fact.
    ‘Good for you!’ she praised. ‘I’ve never been anywhere, even Mirramunna.’
    ‘Oh, I don’t know there.’
    ‘Then it will be new for both of us.’
    She must have overdone her enthusiasm. He dampened her with, ‘I don’t care.’ This, she thought warily, was going to take quite a long time. Wisely, she made haste slowly. They counted more cars, colours this time. Then her glance fell on his propped-up leg.
    ‘I was a nurse in a children’s ward once,’ she proffered, ‘but I never ever saw plaster that didn’t have something on it. Faces ... or writing ... sometimes noughts and crosses.’
    ‘On their legs?’
    ‘Or arms or shoulders or wherever they were being mended.’
    ‘Didn’t the doctor mind?’
    ‘No. He knew the plaster had to come off and then be thrown away.’
    ‘ He’d mind, I think.’
    ‘Your father?’
    ‘I don’t call him that.’
    ‘What do you call him, then?’
    ‘Nothing.’
    Quickly, as she certainly didn’t want to start ‘nothing’ again, she said, ‘But when you do call him, Jason?’
    ‘I only saw him a little time ago. I was away.’ He said that a little uncertainly as though he could not remember very clearly.
    ‘I see. And you’re to call him — ?’
    ‘Bern,’ he said. ‘That’s silly, too, because it’s a country as well.’
    ‘Yes,’ said Frances rather curiously, ‘a very lovely city, though, Jason, not a country.’ This child might not have been to school, but he certainly was not uneducated, geographically, anyway, she thought. ‘It has wonderful cathedrals.’
    ‘I know. I lived there.’
    She smiled at his imagination again.
    ‘Look,’ she proposed, ‘I don’t think he’ll mind about the plaster, but just in case we’ll do it in pencil that we can rub out ... that is, if you want to write on your leg.’
    ‘Oh yes.’ His little face actually quirked into a smile.
    They played all morning on Jason’s stiff leg. When it came to rubbing out he laughed so much that Mrs. Campbell came to the door to watch the fun.
    ‘First time I’ve heard that sound from him,’ she said to Frances as the little boy dragged himself laboriously to the bathroom to wash his hands before lunch.
    He got into his shell quickly again, though, and as after lunch he went to his bed for his afternoon nap, starting again at four o’clock comprised as much ice-breaking as before.
    The leg did it once more, though. By now Frances had taught him noughts and crosses, and by the time Mr. West came into the room that evening there was very little space left for another bout. The child looked quickly up at the man, measuring his reaction to a previously white surface now liberally peppered with small figures.
    But—‘How do you read them?’ said his father. ‘You ought to use chalk and write bigger.’
    ‘Can I?’
    ‘Black chalk. It’ll show up much better.’
    ‘But it won’t rub out. It kind of tickles when she rubs.’
    ‘She?’
    ‘France.’
    ‘That’s a country, old sonno. Remember?’
    ‘I think I’ll call her France, though.’
    ‘Yes, Jason, do,’ Frances said.
    They all dined together, Jason in a chair with an attached tray so he could still hold out his leg. Bill Furness came up, and Mrs. Campbell joined them. The talk was general. After the meal Frances asked Jason would he like to go to bed, feeling a little apprehensive as she did so in case he protested, as children often do, and she did not know enough yet to judge how to handle him,